


My skin has turned to porcelain

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a href="http://chavahrishonah.livejournal.com/848.html">Fridged Women Ficathon</a>.  Prompt is Lysa, <i>My skin has turned to porcelain</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	My skin has turned to porcelain

After Petyr leaves her, she sits before her mirror, vainly attempting (and she knows how ridiculous it is) to ascertain if she’s changed, if her vanished maidenhead is evident in the planes of her face, the tilt of her mouth, the gleam in her eye. But there is nothing. Just flushed cheeks, a cracked lip from when she bit down, hard, in reaction to the sharp yet brief pain of her undoing. Nothing different, nothing remarkable. 

She blows out the candle, throwing herself resignedly in her bed.

*

She begins to notice the signs of aging one night, before another mirror, in another home, as she peers half-bored at her reflection. The sharp angles of youth are beginning to soften and she can detect, very faintly, the beginnings of crows-feet at the corners of her eyes, and small tension lines at her mouth. It’s no wonder though, with the parade of dead children and failed children, and her only living one so ill, so frail. But somehow it’s been worth it, and the agony and the effort have been rewarded with a son. Perhaps it’s not all been in vain.

She knows it’s not when she hears his cries, and rises to comfort him.

*

She’d never thought that the passage of time would comfort her, but Lysa is glad that the years have flown by, and she’s come full circle. Petyr is hers again, and it almost seems a jest, perhaps a dream, a nightmare, because she’ll wake soon and all of those years of storing secret longing will have been squandered, mere folly of an aging woman who has grown sad and soft and silent, with nothing to show for her years but a sickly child, a fortress, and a heart full of fear. But none of that is true. As she prepares herself for her husband, she powders her face, hiding the blotchiness, symptom of weeping, with a smooth whiteness that obliterates her faults. She adorns herself, clipping earrings to lobes, sliding rings on fingers, lacing fleshy curves tightly.

 _I will be flawless_ , she thinks, and turns to wait.


End file.
